


G.O.M.E.R.

by Alliterative_Albatross



Category: Triple Frontier (2019)
Genre: Attraction, Badass Reader, Doctor/Patient, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Minor Injuries, Physician Reader, Reader stitches Frankie up, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, catcalling, cuteness, drunk dudes are assholes but frankie drinks his respect women juice, get with the program morales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:41:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29685525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alliterative_Albatross/pseuds/Alliterative_Albatross
Summary: Injured, designated driver Frankie brings his drunk friends into your emergency room.
Relationships: Francisco "Catfish" Morales/Reader, Francisco "Catfish" Morales/You
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	G.O.M.E.R.

“Um, Doc, we’ve got a problem.” Trisha, your triage nurse and one of your best work buddies, ducks her head hesitantly into the hidden corner where you’re charting. 

“What is it, Trish?” Instantly, you’re on red alert. Such is the life of the night shift emergency physician. 

Trish grimaces. “Nothing like that.” She fidgets with the clipboard that’s in her hands. “Just, your next patient is refusing to leave the waiting area.”

You shut your tired eyes. “He can come back to triage or he can get the fuck out of my emergency room. I don’t care which.”

You feel, rather than see Trish’s wince. 

“Sorry,” you breathe, opening your eyes and shooting her a little glance of apology. “Just, long night.”

Trish’s eyes flicker down to your newly bare left hand. “I know,” she says simply.

And she does. You’ve talked divorce many, many times with Trish over a beer. She’s got a heart of gold and the patience of a saint.

You heave yourself up with a deep sigh. “Okay, so what’s the deal with our guy? Is he drunk? He sounds drunk.”

Trish scoffs. “His friends sure are, and that’s the problem.”

Oh, god. 

“Typical Saturday,” you grouse as you follow her through the winding corridors, weaving past an abandoned ultrasound machine and a pair of paramedics wheeling an empty stretcher. 

Zane pokes his head from behind a curtain. “Hey Doc, can I get pain order for bay seven? Says he’s allergic to demerol.” 

“Ibuprofen,” you snap, dodging him just in time to avoid a head on collision. “Did we ever get that lactate back on six?”

“Still pending.”

“Naturally.” 

You turn your attention back to Trish. “Bar fight, then?”

“He says he fell.” Trish shrugs, shooting you a skeptical ‘that’s what they all say’ glance. “He’s got a 6 cm laceration to the right mandible, no bruising or swelling. The bleeding’s mostly stopped by now. Vitals are stable, and he’s oriented. Seems pretty cut and dry to me.”

“No other injuries?”

“None.”

“Great, thanks.” You glance up at the board. F. Morales, 42M, NKDA. You swing by the supply room for a suture kit, then to the pyxis for lidocaine, wondering why the hell you’d settled on emergency medicine, anyway. 

Most days, there’s nothing exciting or glamorous about this job.

You breeze through the heavy double doors well before they’re fully opened, intent on getting this over with so you can check on your subdural in bay two. He should be back from CT soon.

“Morales?” you call, and four men piled in a dark corner of the waiting room stand at once. You recognize your patient instantly, though. He takes half a step forward, all wide dark eyes and apologetic expression, still pressing a blood smeared gauze to his lower jaw. 

“I’m really sorry about this,” he babbles. “It’s just…” he waves his hand behind him, indicating his obviously drunk group of friends. “I’m D.D. tonight.”

You ignore his pack of excuses, just as you ignore the dingbats behind him oohing and ahhing and catcalling like a bunch of goddamn animals. 

“Goddamn, Fish, she’s hot.”

“Holy shit, is she your doctor?” Like you haven’t heard that before. 

One even whistles lowly under his breath. 

Morales whirls on them. “Shut the fuck up,” he growls.

Well, the thought is nice, even if it isn’t very effective. 

God, you hate drunk people.

“Have a seat, Mr. Morales.” Morales does, tugging the green vinyl chair forward a tiny bit, and you catch a glimpse of tanned, well-muscled arms peeking out from his rolled shirt sleeves. 

You kneel to get a better look at his injury. 

“Fuck, Fish, she’s already on her knees for you.”

“Hey!” Morales jumps to his feet at that one, but before he can speak, you whip around, pinning the perpetrator with a steely glare.

“One more fucking word,” you spit, enunciating each syllable with deadly precision, “and I will have you escorted from this hospital faster than you can blink. I don’t give a shit how you get home. Is that clear?”

Three drunken pairs of eyes blink glossily at you. “Yes ma’am,” one of them whispers. 

“Good. Now have a seat over there, and keep your mouths shut. There are other people in this waiting room that shouldn’t have to listen to you.”

Chastened, they shuffle away, stumbling to the opposite corner of the room. You hear one of them mutter beneath his breath that you’re ‘scary.’

Well, good. 

You turn back to Morales to find him staring at you, horrified. His face is flaming. “I’m so, so sorry,” he starts again.

“You said that already.” You soften the words with a tired smile. “Have a seat, please.”

“Okay,” Morales breathes. He sits. 

You drop back to your knees on the dirty hospital floor. Probably it should bother you, but after years of wading through blood, vomit, sweat, and shit, you don’t think twice about it. You scrub off just fine. “Tilt up, let me see.”

Morales obeys, tipping his head back toward the ceiling and pulling the gauze away. For the first time, you get a good look at the gash he’s been hiding. It’s a good two and a half inches long, extending just beneath the angle of his jaw and into the flesh below his chin. It’s not deep, and there’s no nerve or tendon involvement, but it looks painful. 

You can’t help but notice that from this angle, Mr. Morales is a very attractive man. He’s broad in all the right places, decently dressed without being pretentious. Unkempt curls peek darkly from beneath a battered ballcap. He looks rugged, casual, approachable, his neck and jaw lightly dusted with dark, patchy scruff.

That’s going to be a problem.

“I’m going to have to shave you,” you explain, running your index finger just above the edges of his wound, near his cheek. “If any of this gets into the wound, it could cause an infection.”

Morales glances down at you, and you pull your hand away as if burned. “Okay,” he says simply. He doesn’t seem bothered. 

“It’s going to be uncomfortable. Are you sure there’s nobody that can babysit them?” You jerk your head toward his idiot friends, still huddled quietly in the corner where you’d banished them. “Normally, I’d bring you around back and offer you some sedation, just to take the edge off.”

Morales shakes his head, purses his lips. “It’s just me,” he says softly. “Do what you’ve got to do.”

You return minutes later with a razor. Morales grimaces a little, but he holds still as you get to work. It’s a shitty angle in an awkward spot, and you’re forced to brace your left hand against his neck to pull his skin taut, being as gentle as you can.

Morales’ breath hitches.

“Sorry.” Your voice comes out as a whisper. There’s something strangely intimate about kneeling beneath an awake man and shaving his face, and you can’t help but notice how the muscles in Morales’ neck quiver as he moves, or how warm his skin is, even through your gloves. 

“It’s fine.”

“So, why Fish?”

“Sorry?” Morales’ brow quirks in question, and you can tell he’s stopping himself from turning his head to look at you.

“Your friends,” you clarify, putting away the razor and reaching for a chloraprep stick. “They call you Fish.”

This time, Morales does tilt his face to you, and suddenly, you’re struck by the expressiveness of those deep brown eyes. “My friends call me Frankie,” he corrects gently. His tongue darts out to lick at his upper lip.

Fuck, you’ve always had a thing for brown eyes. You wonder if you’re reading him right, if he’s giving you implicit permission to call him that. “Frankie,” you repeat, rolling the syllables on your tongue. It’s not at all what you’d have expected. You decide it suits him.

Something flutters in your belly, and you squash it down hard.

“That’s me,” Frankie grins at you, lopsided and charming, and offers you a hand to shake. “Frankie Morales. Nice to meet you.”

His grip is firm and warm. Long, nimble fingers, calluses that catch at your latex gloves. Nails that are short but well kept. Gorgeous, tanned skin that flexes subtly above ropey tendons. Nice fat veins, perfect for a 16 gauge, but not big enough to be gross. Hands that are skilled, hands that have worked.

Really, really nice hands, your treacherous mind observes appreciatively. 

You kill that thought dead. “This is cold.” You hold up the chloraprep in warning.

Obligingly, Frankie angles away and allows you to clean his wound. 

“So, how did it happen?”

For the first time, Frankie Morales winces. You smile a little at that. 

“Umm,” he starts, pursing his lips into a tight grimace that you can’t help but find adorable. “I fell.”

You huff in amusement. “Yeah, I heard. I wanna know how.”

Frankie glances down at you again as you reach for the vial of lidocaine. Probably you should reprimand him for moving - that wound is sterile now, after all - but you find that you don’t have the heart to direct those dark, probing eyes away from you. It’s been a long time since somebody has looked at you like that.

Like they see you.

“Let’s just say I slipped and leave it at that. Spare me the last bit of my dignity. Please.”

Your laugh is a real laugh this time. “Clumsy much?”

“Not usually. I was distracted.”

“Well damn, now I’m dying to have the full story.”

“Fat chance.” Frankie’s smile stretches across his entire face, revealing a little dimple that you’ve just now noticed. You could easily catch yourself staring at that dimple, or working hard to expose it again, or brushing it away with your lips, and the thought scares you.

“Gonna numb you up a little now.” Again, you brace Frankie’s jaw with your free hand, and this time, he sucks a sharp breath at your touch. “Fair warning, this stuff stings like a bitch.”

“I can handle it.”

And he does, just barely hissing between his teeth as you inject the lidocaine at the edges of his wound. You work quickly, and it’s not long before he relaxes. You can feel the tension leaking from the muscles of his neck and jaw. “Okay?”

“Yup.”

You find yourself taking your time with his sutures. Of course, you want this to be your best work, but something deep in your gut is telling you that’s not the only reason.

“So, am I gonna scar?” Frankie asks, as if he’s picked up on your line of thought.

“A little,” you admit, reaching for the next monocryl. “I can fix a lot of things, but I’m not god. It will be faint, though.”

“I don’t mind.”

“No?” You tie off the last suture and lay your needle driver down. 

Frankie huffs. “It’s a memory.” His voice is warm, a little wistful, and your heart flutters at the implication that he’d want to remember this night. 

Christ, you’ve got it bad. Maybe Trish is right. Maybe you do need to get laid.

“Is that it?” Frankie is looking straight at you now, lips pursed in a frown, like he doesn’t want to get out of his chair. 

You glance across the room at his friends. Two of them are sleeping, the other is playing on his phone. 

You pick up the razor and grin. “Want me to even you out?”

Frankie’s eyes sparkle. “That’s nice of you.” He leans back in the chair, angling around to offer you his opposite jaw. 

Your breath catches. You can’t remember the last time somebody called you nice. Professional, yes. Bitch, daily. Authoritative, assertive, intelligent, even. 

But not nice.

The emotionless, career-driven physician in you spits vehemently that your emergency room is not a goddamn barber shop.

The lonely, touch-starved woman doesn’t give a damn. 

Silencing your internal conflict, you set to it, biting you lip, working carefully not to nick Frankie’s skin. The angle still sucks.

“Thank you for this,” Frankie breathes. His eyes are closed, his head slumped back against the wall. He looks suddenly exhausted, and your heart throbs in your chest at the sight of him.

“Doc, there’s a STEMI coming from Urgent Care on 7th. ETA ten minutes.” Trish’s voice draws you back to reality.

“Thanks, Trish. Get cath lab on standby.”

“Already done.” Trish pauses at the ER doors. You can feel her eyes on you, notice her noticing you shaving the wrong side of your patient’s already-sutured face.

Fuck. You’re going to have so many questions to answer after this shift is over.

Frankie’s eyes flutter open. “No rest for the wicked, huh?”

“Who are you calling wicked?”

He laughs as you pull away, stands with a little groan. “Thanks, Doc. Again.” His voice is suddenly shy.

You nod, suddenly dry throated, then remind yourself fiercely to get your shit together. “Your sutures will dissolve on their own. No need to have them removed. Keep the dressing clean and dry. If you notice any swelling or pain, you’ll need to see your primary care doctor for a follow up.”

“I can’t see you?”

Startled, you glance up at him, blinking like a deer in the headlights.

“Wait, wait, no.” Frankie realizes what he’s said, is stammering, blushing, raising his hands in frantic apology. “That’s not what I meant - Shit.”

Reality slows to a crawl. As an emergency medicine physician, you’re used to thinking fast. Quick, split second decisions are your bread and butter, and you’ve rarely made one you regret. 

“My shift ends at seven.”

Frankie’s eyes bug out. His mouth opens and closes, and for a moment, yeah, you’re reminded a little of a fish. 

It’s precious.

“And I like coffee.” You pin him with a sharp look. 

Get with the program, Morales.

Slowly, that wide, dimpled smile stretches over Frankie’s face, and it’s like the sun rising. “Avoca is just down the road,” he says hesitantly. His eyes are damn near shining with hope. “Pretty sure they roast their own beans. Meet you there?”

You match his grin with one of your own. “Absolutely. Now get out of my ER, Frankie Morales.”

**Author's Note:**

> GOMER is a well known medical acronym that stands for Get Out Of My Emergency Room. 
> 
> For those of you who aren’t in healthcare, reader might sound like a bitch. For those of you who are, you understand implicitly.
> 
> So, the realist in me wants to clarify that this scenario would never happen just because of the sterility issue, but damn, I had fun writing it anyway. 
> 
> This one is dedicated to all of the healthcare workers out there. You are tired. I see you. I feel you. Thank you.


End file.
